Remember when Dungeon Magazine was all about adventures?

[the Jester]

That's not what they're saying. They're saying that you can play that style of character, not an actual 1e character.

To be fair, I seem to recall mention of using all your old books at the table.

(I could be misremembering, though, or it may not have been one of the designers.)

 

[JoeGKushner]

One of the ways WoTC defended bringing the character builder online was talking about how wi-fi was everywhere these days.

In that spirit, they need to digitalize all of their old Dungeon magazines, or at least those they have the rights to, and make them accessible while online. They need to do this with their old print adventurers as well.

Its all well and good to talk about the glory days of the older edition and the split and the edition wars, but making the actual material available again will go a long way to removing the egg from the electronic face of WoTC than talking about the 'soon' program.

Hell, make an App for it that you can download on the Android Market or the iMarket. There are getting to be more smart phone and tablet users than computer users these days and WoTC needs to quickly embrace those potential sales as opposed to sitting in a corner talking about content theft of products that are not in print and aren't making anyone any money at this time.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One of the ways WoTC defended bringing the character builder online was talking about how wi-fi was everywhere these days.

I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex- one of the top 10 population centers on the USA- and in my experience, this is a bit of wishful thinking.

I purchased my iPod Touch a couple of years ago, and just got an iPad2 (sans 3G) for Christmas. While I do find wifi signals all over the place, most of the ones I find are locked- requiring passwords- or if not locked, do not connect to the Internet.

 

[Hussar]

Now that I can't agree with. Do you have any idea how much money you're talking about doing that JoeG? You'd have to go back to all those older issues, run it through the lawyers first to make sure that you have the rights to everything, re-input it since raw scans aren't going to work on a portable device, format and layout, since, again, none of that material is remotely formatted for a portable device, then build an app to access those magazines.

There would have to be a heck of a lot of interest in OOP Dragon magazines before that's going to happen.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Now that I can't agree with. Do you have any idea how much money you're talking about doing that JoeG? You'd have to go back to all those older issues, run it through the lawyers first to make sure that you have the rights to everything, re-input it since raw scans aren't going to work on a portable device, format and layout, since, again, none of that material is remotely formatted for a portable device, then build an app to access those magazines.

There would have to be a heck of a lot of interest in OOP Dragon magazines before that's going to happen.

Depends on how far back you go. When Paizo was doing it, if they weren't doing it on a computer first I'd be shocked.

The real older issues, yeah, those could be problematic but...

WoTC did have a lot of pre 3rd ed stuff for sale in PDF format at one time and took it down because of 'theft'.

All those things that were already done and are already ready to go? They could, I don't want to say easily, but fairly easily, be put into the 'cloud'.

and as far as interest, its WoTC talking about uniting the fanbase. Actions have, and will always speak louder than words. Talking is a good way of providing information, not a good way of showcasing what you actually mean.

Unit all the fans? Sure, put the material where the mouth is.

 

[falcarrion]

Now that I can't agree with. Do you have any idea how much money you're talking about doing that JoeG? You'd have to go back to all those older issues, run it through the lawyers first to make sure that you have the rights to everything, re-input it since raw scans aren't going to work on a portable device, format and layout, since, again, none of that material is remotely formatted for a portable device, then build an app to access those magazines.

There would have to be a heck of a lot of interest in OOP Dragon magazines before that's going to happen.

There was a cd with pdfs of older issues that either wotc or tsr put out.
I beleive it was issues 1 through 250.

 

[Hussar]

Falcarrion - that's the issue. Many of those older issues were on the CD were published without permission. TSR had to stop producing those CD's. Can you imagine the poop hitting the fan if Hasbro did the same thing? People might not have sued TSR, but, they'd certainly sue Hasbro.

And, sure, Paizo Dungeon and Dragon would be easy to do. But, then again, those issues are still readily available. Just go to the Paizo site.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I'm so glad I bought the Dragon Archive CD when it came out. I understand it's pretty rare and expensive on ebay these days.

 

[grodog]

I'd love to own a Dungeon archive on DVD: the Dragon archive is the single-best resource I've ever purchased for D&D across any edition.

 

[Hussar]

See, but, again, there's the trick. Doing something like that would be expensive. You cannot take TSR's word that they own the rights to everything - it's not like they have a stellar track record here, which means you'd have to go through every single issue and make sure that you have the rights, not only to the adventure, but to all the art as well. Lawyers aren't exactly cheap.

Then, again, you've got the formatting issues. Unless you're just going to flog raw scans, you'd have to pretty much start from the ground up. This isn't something that you're going to do overnight. Anything from about 1998 or earlier probably isn't even available in digital format. Or, at least in a format any modern computer would recognize.

And, doing all this, you still have Paizo sitting there with a pretty fair inventory of issues for sale. They've got the entire run of 3e Dungeon in PDF right there for the taking, from Issue 82 on up.

I wonder how well they sell.